Sarah Kember

About the FilmHal's House takes a meandering tour through the thoughts of an archaeologist
and a media theorist to explore the relations between technology and art in
human societies through time. Jumping from prehistoric timescales to the
contemporary day, Hal, a research subject stuck in a smart home, is smothered by
exchanges with his computational house helper who seems to know about art,
feelings, and thoughts. What the house does with this information - surveil and
sell it or scratch it from the server - is unclear. The film is based on a
short fictional story by Dr. Sarah J Kember, Professor of Media and
Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London.

About the DirectorsBritt Wray is a researcher, artist and media producer who was trained first
as a biologist and now explores scientific themes in her work, which often take
form as radio, video, textiles or writing. www.brittwray.comNadja Oertelt is a researcher, scientist and documentary maker interested in
the intersections between art, science and society. She has studied visual arts,
film, neuroscience, archaeology and anthropology. http://unorthodoxmovie.com/

Re-printed below, is a local
newspaper report about a lightning strike in Florida. The actual
photograph has been removed, for reasons that will be made clear in my
own account of what the image shows, and what happened to it as it
began to circulate to a wider online audience. You may have seen the
image yourself. You may even have contributed to its own metamorphosis.
If you are one of a number of people who believe that what it shows is
a moment of change, of transformation which is normally invisible to
the human eye and fatal to the individual, then what follows is proof –
scientific and non-scientific – that you are mistaken, and at the same
time, correct.

Media, Mars and Metamorphosis
is the title of a remarkable open access e-book by Jeremy Hoyle. Hoyle
is a former student, and at times zealous disciple of Francis Fukuyama
(Wikipedia). His work echoes and extends the concerns Fukuyama
expressed in Our Posthuman Future; for the status of human nature in
the era of biotechnology, and for the rights of the individual in a
threatened liberal democracy.1 Like Fukuyama, Hoyle considers himself
to be a social philosopher, and he too is something of a populist. He
has sought out three of the most recent and controversial experiments
in biotechnology in order to dramatise his concerns, and each promises
(or threatens) to change the meaning of human life. He has chosen open
access publishing because, as Gary Hall points out (in Digitize This
Book!), it has the potential to reach a very wide audience while
garnering feedback and creating a market for a subsequent paper
publication: ‘the main priority of most academics is to have their
research read by as many people as possible, in the hope, not only of
receiving greater levels of feedback and recognition for their work,
and thus an enhanced reputation, but also of having the biggest
possible impact on future research, and perhaps even society’ (2008:
46) . However, the impact of Hoyle’s first draft was not quite what he
had hoped for, and indeed, expected. Of the three people he interviewed
in connection with the experiments, two are currently suing him for
defamation of character, and the third is still consulting her lawyer.
On the advice of his lawyer, Hoyle has temporarily withdrawn the
manuscript and its associated links – including a podcast, blog and
short film on YouTube – from the web. Although he has sought to remove
all evidence of his book, and although it was only posted for a brief
period, I was able to read it, and can offer the summary that follows.